A gang has been ordered to cut clay for the luting of the coke furnaces. The clay is piled in a huge bank in the open sunlight. A coolie hacks and hacks till he has hewn out a small cave with twenty foot of clay above him. Why should he trouble to climb up the bank and bring down the eave of the cave? It is easier to cut in. The Sirdar of the gang is watching round the shoulder of the bank. The coolie cuts lazily as he stands. Sunday is very near, and he will get gloriously drunk in Giridih Bazaar with his week's earnings. He digs his own grave stroke by stroke, for he has not sense enough to see that undercut clay is dangerous. He is a Sonthal from the hills. There is a smash and a dull thud, and his grave has shut down upon him in an avalanche of heavy-caked clay.
The Sirdar calls to the Babu of the Ovens, and with the promptitude of his race the Babu loses his head. He runs puffily, without giving orders, anywhere, everywhere. Finally he runs to the Sahib's house. The Sahib is at the other end of the collieries. He runs back. The Sahib has gone home to wash. Then his indiscretion strikes him. He should have sent runners—fleet-footed boys from the coal-screening gangs. He sends them and they fly. One catches the Sahib just changed after his bath. "There is a man dead at such a place"—he gasps, omitting to say whether it is a surface or a pit accident. On goes the grimy pit-kit, and in three minutes the Sahib's dogcart is flying to the place indicated.
They have dug out the Sonthal. His head is smashed in, spine and breastbone are broken, and the gang-Sirdar, bowing double, throws the blame of the accident on the poor, shapeless, battered dead. "I had warned him, but he would not listen! Twice I warned him! These men are witnesses."
The Babu is shaking like a jelly. "Oh, sar, I have never seen a man killed before! Look at that eye, sar! I should have sent runners. I ran everywhere! I ran to your house. You were not in. I was running for hours. It was not my fault! It was the fault of the gang-Sirdar." He wrings his hands and gurgles. The best of accountants, but the poorest of coroners is he. No need to ask how the accident happened. No need to listen to the Sirdar and his "witnesses." The Sonthal had been a fool, but it was the Sirdar's business to protect him against his own folly. "Has he any people here?"
"Yes, his rukni,—his kept-woman,—and his sister's brother-in-law. His home is far-off."
The sister's brother-in-law breaks through the crowd howling for vengeance on the Sirdar. He will send for the police, he will have the price of his brother's blood full tale. The windmill arms and the angry eyes fall, for the Sahib is making the report of the death.
"Will the Government give me pensin? I am his wife," a woman clamours, stamping her pewter-ankleted feet. "He was killed in your service. Where is his pensin? I am his wife."
"You lie! You're his rukni. Keep quiet! Go! The pension comes to us."
The sister's brother-in-law is not a refined man, but the rukni is his match. They are silenced. The Sahib takes the report, and the body is borne away. Before to-morrow's sun rises the gang-Sirdar may find himself a simple "surface-coolie," earning nine pice a day; and in a week some Sonthal woman behind the hills may discover that she is entitled to draw monthly great wealth from the coffers of the Sirkar. But this will not happen if the sister's brother-in-law can prevent it. He goes off swearing at the rukni.
In the meantime, what have the rest of the dead man's gang been doing? They have, if you please, abating not one stroke, dug out all the clay, and would have it verified. They have seen their comrade die. He is dead. Bus![17] Will the Sirdar take the tale of clay? And yet, were twenty men to be crushed by their own carelessness in the pit, these same impassive workers would scatter like panic-stricken horses.